Bulgarian legislators want a parliamentary panel to look into Russian involvement, according to Ivaylo Mirchev of We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria, Euractiv reports.
The announcement follows the discovery of a link between a group of Bulgarian enterprises and a network of Russian influence in Romania during the annulled presidential elections.
“The Russian digital agency that ran the nationalist (Calin) Georgescu’s campaign in Romania is connected to over 50 Bulgarian companies, most of them in the same industry, registered in the city of Plovdiv, and owned by the same person,” Mirchev told Euractiv.
He went on to say that Russian propaganda has been infiltrating Bulgaria for years, primarily through funding from Kremlin-linked energy businesses.
Based on a Romanian report published by Snoop in Romania on December 3, the Bulgarian investigative organization BG Elves discovered 51 firms registered in the name of a Georgian. Many of these were registered in Bulgaria on the same day, mostly in 2024. Investigators have work emails, Facebook accounts, phone numbers, and addresses for many of the people employed by these organizations. There are numerous. Hundreds. And all of them are Russian.
Here are a few of the sites identified by the Romanians in the report:
prekrasna.bg
zdravni.com
struma.com
istinata.net
vihrogon.bg
borbabg.com
izumitelno.com
bgnovinite.eu
mirogled.com
kotasport.com
rodopchani.bg
webfen.net
According to the BG Elves, the list does not indicate whether the sites spread disinformation in their own content, but rather that they used the same advertising platform, which allows illicit content in ads.
The major company handles ad management and targeting. Some firms are passed from Russians to Russians. One company sells VPN services while also “guarding” against leaks. Another IT firm (which, needless to mention, is owned by certain Russians) owes millions in taxes.
Most businesses are registered at the same address. In Plovdiv.
The investigative organization has urged Bulgarian investigative journalists to concentrate on uncovering the mechanisms that Russian influence wields on social media. According to the data acquired, the Plovdiv-based company cluster generates hundreds of millions of social media impressions each day, with the greatest impact in Romania, Hungary, Greece, Bosnia, and Bulgaria.
Euractiv sent a request for a response to the Georgian owner, George A., who has been informally named by the group. So yet, he has not responded.
We previously reported on a draft measure presented to the National Assembly by a group of fifteen Bulgarian MPs to resist Russian influence in the country.
